I would say that's also true of LoTR.

It's not a short story. It's novella length (i.e. the category short of a novel), which is actually about the right size for movie adaptations.

The sand…it will get everywhere.

Really? I had kind of OD'ed on dour Scandinavian crime movies and passed on this one.

The end was a bit too soppy.

Yeah, the first Cars is better on repeat viewings (inevitable if you had kids the right age when it was released). First time through it seems amiable enough but pretty derivative and obvious. Its charms grow on you.

But this is always the way with Coen movies. They somehow manage to polarise their own fan base with every film.

"Would it were…"

If you beat yourself up, you might be in Fight Club.

Well I care about technical achievement, but yes, it can't make up for bland storytelling (haven't seen Kubo yet). As Teresa Nielsen Hayden once wrote, the cheapest special effect is good writing.

They blew the budget on their 80s wardrobes.

I'm pretty sure a large part of their demographic was just trying to bring ethics to games journalism.

I'd also say the Fallout universe would be a great setting for a an action movie. Forget using any of the existing stories, just take one of the many variant settings and run 2 hours of non-stop escalating tension intercut with lashings of sardonic humour.

Westworld is like a meta version of Red Dead Redemption because it's got all that grimy Western storytelling in there overlaid with a brilliant (and entirely justified by its premise) overarching discussion of the difficulties of writing stories that customers interact with AND have to meet commercial demands.

Translation: "We've seen the rough cut of the finished movie and it's going to bomb. What the hell can we say to put a good spin on it?"

It's the same for most failed political ideologies…

That's one way to achieve transubstantiation.

A yen? That's not American!

I wouldn't mind meeting Daniel Auteuil, though.

You could host a movie night on your front lawn.